Art history Lecture 3: Sacred Places and Powerful Images

serdab

Arabic for "cellar": the small, partly or completely walled-off chamber of an ancient Egyptian tomb that houses the statue of the deceased.

Mastaba

Arabic for "bench," describing the flat, rectangular shape of the tomb's facade; a setting for the rituals of the ancestor cult.

Amun-Re

In ancient Egypt, chief god of Thebes, the sun god in human form, typically represented as blue, wearing a plumed crown.

Horus

One of the oldest and most significant of the ancient Egyptian gods, the sky god HorusDownload Horus was considered king of the earth and a force for good, as well as the patron and protector of the king. Horus was the son of Osiris and Isis (or Hathor, depending on the tradition), and he was usually portrayed as a falcon or falcon-headed man. His eyes symbolize the sun and moon.

stela

An upright stone slab decorated with inscriptions or reliefs; used as a grave marker or commemorative monument.

step pyramid

A funerary pyramid formed by six mastaba-like elements of decreasing size stacked on top of each other to constitute a metaphorical stairway to the sun god Re: the first great monumental architecture in human history to have survived. See also pyramid.

false door

Architectural feature of ancient Egyptian mortuary temples and tombs: a relief representation of an actual door, the place for presenting offerings to the tomb owner.

cavetto cornice

A large concave molding, or decorative contour, that arches outward to form a small hollow (cavetto in Italian), or quarter-circle; the crowning feature of many Egyptian buildings (hence sometimes called "Egyptian cornice").

hypostyle hall

A vast interior space characterized by many closely spaced columns supporting the stone slabs forming the roof. At the Great Temple of Amun at Karnak, the columns have flower and bud capitals suggesting the papyrus of the primordial marshland.

capital

The sculpted block that tops a column. See also bud capital and papyrus capital.

papyriform

Having the form of a papyrus (a reedlike plant that grows in flooded swamps and was once plentiful across the Nile Delta), such as the columns of the Great Temple of Amun at Karnak.

clerestory

The topmost zone of a wall that extends above the adjoining roof, with windows admitting direct light into the building.

maat

The principle that regulates ancient Egyptian culture: the concept of balance, order, law, justice--the opposite of chaos (isfet). Personified as the goddess who ordered the universe at the moment of its creation and sometimes represented as a feather, as in the Weighing of the Heart.

ankh

Egyptian hieroglyph in the form of a looped cross (like a key), signifying life.

apotropaic

Having the power to ward away evil or bad luck